SO HERE'S AN interesting thing. I wrote a column on Friday about Fredrika Keefer, the young girl refused admittance to the San Francisco Ballet School, and many people wrote to either agree or disagree with my opinion, which is interesting because I did not express an opinion.

Well, that's not quite true: I said that the issue of spending public money on private art was worth discussing. People in the ballet world thought that sentiment alone was outlandish -- even though city revenues are being used to support an elitist school, the residents of the city should have no opinions about it because, after all, they have little understanding of higher things.

Or something. Maybe I am overreacting to the tone of some of the mail, including a note from the director of a ballet company in the Midwest, who said that "these children should learn early that their bodies are unacceptable."

The issue is not whether classical ballet is a great art form; let's postulate that it is. The question is about the role of art in the community. Should public money be used to help perfect an elitist exercise so that all may benefit by watching it, or should it be used to promote sundry inclusive art forms (Make-A-Circus, as one example) so that all may benefit by participating in them?

I don't have the answer; the question is worth asking, ex cathedra mutterings about Art not withstanding.

ONE ASPECT OF this issue, the suitability of various body types for ballet, brought an eye-opening letter from Dr. Frank Wilson about another art form entirely:

"From 1986 until a few months ago I worked as a neurologist with the Peter F. Ostwald Health Program for Performing Artists at UCSF, and was its medical director for four years. It is one of the most active and successful programs of its kind in the world, and our experience jibes with the grim statistics from the highly vaunted world of classical instrumental music.

"WORLDWIDE, OVER 70 percent of instrumental musicians are injured (and must either interrupt or end their playing careers) as a result of their professional work. Among those with the most severe and intractable injuries, a sizable proportion have been found to have previously unsuspected biomechanical idiosyncrasies in hand, arm or shoulder function that cannot be overcome by training or corrective therapy.

"For some inexplicably cruel reason, these physical disadvantages are found among the most talented and dedicated of the young artists to enter conservatories.

"By ordinary standards there is nothing whatever wrong with them physically.

They just happen to harbor a specific body trait that sentences them to a losing battle between their body and the weirdly shaped physical object (their instrument) they are trying to play not only perfectly but effortlessly.

"Unlike the situation in the ballet schools, where the athleticism of performance and the curious physical impediments to success are well understood, there are virtually no instrumental music programs anywhere in the world that prescreen the biomechanics of young musicians hoping for a high- level performance career.

"There are two horrific results: The youngest musicians with physical limitations begin to have more and more pain as they take on increasingly difficult repertoire, until they reach a point where they cannot keep up. When that happens, they discover that their teachers and their peers consider injuries to be a consequence of a lack of talent. They are forced to drop out of training, and it can take years to repair the psychological damage that results.

"Those who do survive the training may last five or 10 years before they are canceling performances and spending most of their spare time with doctors, chiropractors, physical therapists, massage therapists and a host of other 'body workers,' none of whom can resolve the underlying problem."

Something for ambitious parents to consider.

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As we have seen, democracy is a messy business, in toe shoes or Florida.